Lee Harris: The Politics of the Gang

Tech Central Station ^ | March 2, 2004 | Lee Harris

[quidnunc]

In my book, Civilization and Its Enemies, I argue that all successful civilizations tend to forget just how difficult it was for their ancestors to rise to a civilized state. Furthermore, I argue that if the civilization is spectacularly successful, as ours has been, it even begins to nurture the collective illusion that human beings come into the world predisposed to live harmoniously together. We get along fine, and so naturally we are puzzled when others don't. What makes them butcher each other, we wonder, when in fact the real question should be, What keeps us from doing the same thing?

As the proverb goes, A picture is worth a thousand words, and in Haiti today there are enough gruesome pictures to challenge many volumes of utopian political theory, regardless of whether these utopias emanate from the libertarian fantasies of the right or the cosmopolitan fantasies of the left. For the problem with all of these flights of political imagination is that they refuse to take seriously what is right before their eyes in the TV images coming from Haiti — the hideous and obscene truth about the origins of political power.

Over a hundred years ago, the great French historian Albert Sorel wrote:

"… the origins of power … must be veiled …. The mystery whereby the naked fact becomes legitimate right is something to be decently hidden from the sights of men. These are regions of fearful mist …."

And, he might have added, regions of appalling butchery and ruthless aggression.

In Civilization and Its Enemies, I have tried to lift up this veil and to show what lies behind it, and what I found was not a group of enlightened men and women entering under John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance in order to form the correct principle of justice, nor John Locke's prudent and calculatingly self-interested businessmen devising a workable community. Instead what I discovered was exactly what you would discover if you happened by some terrible misfortune to find yourself alone in the streets of Port-au-Prince right now, namely, swarming and ragtag troops of boys and young men, all of them willing to perform actions that no civilized man or woman could even imagine themselves doing, and all of them brandishing guns and knives and clubs.

-snip-

[quidnunc]

Quote:

Haiti should be a sobering lesson to those who entertain the fantasy of libertarianism. If the state is the ultimate source of evil, then what is turning all these boys into butchers? It should also be an equally sobering lesson to those intellectuals who urge us to pledge our allegiance to the community of all the men and women on the planet — does this community include the roving teenage gangs of Haiti or of Liberia? And if not, what do you do with them? Do you force them to attend seminars on political ethics presided over by Martha Nussbaum and Noam Chomsky?

Just so, libertarians are from the planet Goofy!

[gcruse]

Uhm...someone doesn't know the difference between libertarians and anarchists. Maybe their brain is excerpted?

[JohnGalt]

Mssr. Harris is a colossal phony, but I guess he is trying to brazenly deny that neoconservative interventionist fantasy is fundamentally flawed.

Haiti is a perfect example of why real conservatives do not support nation building experiments or believe in neoconservative propositions that "democracy," whatever that is, can be enforced with the barrel of a gun.

[A.J.Armitage]

You, and he, must be confusing libertarianism and anarchism.

[A.J.Armitage]

I don't think he actually said anything about whether or how to fix Haiti.

Personally, I think it should change its name to Luvi. That way every one will stop hating. :-)

[Tolik]

Lee Harris reviews Haiti as example of civilization breakdown. "In Haiti we can begin to understanding the hideous and obscene truth about the origins of political power."

On my reading, the boys' gang is both the first form that political power takes and the form that political power again assumes whenever there has been a complete breakdown of established authority.

The willingness to take risks, to act ruthlessly, to obey unthinkingly the general will of the gang -- all of these make the boys' gang by far the most formidable source of power in a world in which anarchy is the rule; and the reason for this is not hard to see.

When societies break down into anarchy, the normal channels of trust and allegiance are no longer operative. Each individual is cut off and isolated from the other individuals who are normally in his life; each seeks to hide himself from view, to lie low, to stay away from the windows, and certainly out of the streets. But this centrifugal tendency of the average person runs in the exact opposite direction from the centripetal tendency of the boys' gang. Under such circumstances, normal individuals fly apart, while teenage boys and young men collect together. And, before long, the only safety to be found is the safety in numbers of the gang. The gang rules.

They are ruling in Haiti right now.

...That is the world out of which our civilization somehow managed to emerge; and it is the harsh baseline to which all collapsing civilizations eventually return.

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[FreedomPoster]

Of course, it can be argued, in opposition to his stance, that gangs of thugs running amok are no match in killing efficiency to a State devoted to it, as, say, the Nazis, Soviets, and Red Chinese have been. Interesting piece nonetheless.

[sauropod]

read later

[Lurker]

Actually, the only way 'democracy' can be enforced is at the barrel of a gun.

This nation used to be a Republic. Sadly, we have degenerated into a 'democracy'.

L

[JohnGalt]

You are certainly correct.

[tpaine]

Quote:

"Haiti should be a sobering lesson to those who entertain the fantasy of libertarianism.
If the state is the ultimate source of evil,"

Whoa right there! Who says the 'state' has to be evil? Not libertarians.
-- Using our constitution, state power can be controlled to prevent evil..

"then what is turning all these boys into butchers?"

The downfall of a dictatorial state is allowing mob rule. Soon, the mobs will kill each other off, and eventually wiser men will reestablish some type of government. Hopefully a constitutional libertarian republic, although we won't hold our breath.

"It should also be an equally sobering lesson to those intellectuals who urge us to pledge our allegiance to the community of all the men and women on the planet — does this community include the roving teenage gangs of Haiti or of Liberia? And if not, what do you do with them? Do you force them to attend seminars on political ethics presided over by Martha Nussbaum and Noam Chomsky?"

Just so, libertarians are from the planet Goofy!

Squid, your remark is just as goofy as Harris's.
What is it that fuels your hate for constitutional republics?

[tpaine]

Harris writes:

"Guns don't kill people; people kill people," in which case the true source of power is not in the gun, but in the trigger finger of the gunman.
 
You can pass out all the guns you want, but if no one is willing to pick them up and fire them, then the guns have no more value to you than a heap of worthless scrap metal.
This means that if guns -- or swords, or clubs -- are to be of any use to you, there must be a convenient pool of human beings who are willing to pick them up, to learn how to use them, or, most importantly, to think nothing of using them, even when they are being used on other human beings -- even their neighbors right across the street from them.
 
Now when you are looking for such a pool of human beings, to what demographic group would you naturally turn? To elderly matrons? To overweight and uxorious husbands? To bankers, to accountants, to school teachers? No, you turn, and you turn at once, to boys somewhere between the age of fourteen and twenty-five; and, what is perhaps most important, you turn to them not as individuals, but as gangs.

Lee Harris

______________________________________


Squid, what more need be said? -- Out of his own mouth Harris proves himself to be quite mad.

Teen gangs always end up controlled by powerful men. And powerful men, when they seek to end anarchy, have evolved constitutional republics as the highest form of government.
Eventually even the fools in Haiti will realize this. -- But first, nature must take its course.

[Tolik]

It looks to me that people on this thread are reading what they want to read in Mr. Harris writing. Besides my disagreement with him equating libertarianism and anarchy, everything else is quite correct.

To your point, he is not arguing who is a better killer, gangs or the powerful state. He knows the correct answer, all right. He uses the example of Haiti to show how the power grab historically begins before it eventually evolves into the centralized states.

He also marvels here and in other his writings how fortunate we are to live in a society that all but forgotten the wild world of open and bloody power struggle. That we don't appreciate enough what ordeals generations before us had to go through. And because of this amnesia the liberal West does not understand the primary motivations of many of our opponents in the third world. Haiti is just an extreme example of kind of primordial soup our civilization came out of it long time ago. But the danger of going back to it is bigger than we think.

Lee Harris has some good thoughts about the nature of our struggle in the post-9/11 world. I highly recommend his thoughts provoking articles and his latest book.

Lee Harris classics. If you have time, read these articles:

essay Al Qaeda’s Fantasy Ideology By Lee Harris (FR post)   "Al Qaeda's Fantasy Ideology," (original)

The Clausewitz Curse (FR post)             The Clausewitz Curse (original)
Given our uncertainty, what alternative does this, or any, administration have? 

 Our World-Historical Gamble  (FR post)           Our World-Historical Gamble (original)
The collapse of the liberal order and the end of classical sovereignty.

His new book:   Civilization and Its Enemies : The Next Stage of History